Author Archives: Manyul Im

University of Bridgeport

Lighter Fare VI – "It's the blocked 氣, Stupid"?

An Associated Press “story” available here:

McCain, Obama and the Search for Good Office “Chi” [sic.]

By JULIE PACE, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 37 minutes ago

With a few simple changes in their Senate offices, both presidential candidates could improve their health, relationships and maybe even get a few more votes, says Taylor Vance, a Feng Shui consultant.

John McCain’s Senate office is eclectic and cluttered.

Barack Obama’s is clean and modern.

Feng Shui is an ancient Chinese philosophy that examines how a person’s environment affects his life.

Modern Feng Shui practitioners focus on placing objects in locations that maximize Chi, or energy.

“It’s really important to honor people’s style and their personal relationships,” Vance says. “You can’t just pick a thing, put it there and say it’s Feng Shui.”

The first thing Vance would do to make McCain’s office more Feng Shui-friendly is get rid of the clutter.

“He’s barricaded in there with so many things,” she said. “I got a feeling that he wasn’t really as available as he could be.”

Step two would be unblocking a set of large double doors. Doors are where energy enters and opportunities flow in, Vance said. But these doors are unused, and blocked by a plant and a chair.

“He may not be getting the advantage of all the opportunities that he might if he unbarricaded them,” she said.

McCain made a smart Feng Shui decision by putting his desk at the back of his office, giving him a long, expansive view that Vance said will help him expand his thoughts.

And Obama?

Some may call his office decor minimalist. Vance calls it accessible.

“It’s an uncomplicated image. What you see is what you get,” she said.

What is in the office is well-placed. To the left of the door, an area that represents knowledge, Obama has a photograph of former South African president Nelson Mandela and a portrait of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“That tells me he’s drawing on their wisdom,” Vance said.

But Obama could enhance his office leadership by moving his desk so it doesn’t have a door behind it.

“Sometimes that can create a situation where you’re not as supported by the people in the office with you,” said Vance, who recommends putting the desk in front of a solid wall.

There’s one suggestion Vance thinks both candidates would benefit from — adding a small fountain in the back left corner of their offices, the area that relates to money and opportunities.

“That would help bring in more campaign contributions,” Vance said.

Minimal Definition and Methodology of Comparative Philosophy

(I had a chance yesterday to discuss “comparative philosophy” at Wesleyan University with Steve Angle, Michael Slote, and their NEH seminar participants. Steve had an interesting handout of a summary he wrote for a conference in Beijing. We agreed he should post it on this blog for comments and discussion. Here it is, with a little renumbering of items for ease of reference in our discussion.)

In June of 2008, the ISCWP convened its third Constructive Engagement conference, on the theme of “Comparative Philosophy Methodology.” During the opening speeches, Prof. Zhao Dunhua, Chair of the Philosophy Department at Peking University, challenged the conference’s participants to put forward a minimal definition of “comparative philosophy” and a statement of its methods. Based on the papers from the conference and the extensive discussion that ensued, during his closing reflections at the end of the conference, Prof. Stephen C. Angle offered the following ideas as a tentative synthesis of the conference’s conclusions:

It would be foolish to assert that we all agreed perfectly on what “comparative philosophy” is, and on how it should be done. However, we did discover that there was considerable agreement.

To begin with, comparative philosophy has two potential dimensions:

A1.    Use terms, ideas, or concepts from one philosophical tradition to help understand or interpret another philosophical tradition. (Note: depending on how one defines “philosophy,” often the “traditions” in question will not be only philosophical. But one can still treat a tradition as philosophy for the purposes of comparative philosophy.)
A2.    Through cross-tradition engagement, seek to advance or develop philosophy.

Not all participants agreed that comparative philosophy could successfully accomplish these goals; see below for some challenges that were articulated. In general, though, we thought that the goals could be met, and articulated some success conditions:

B1.    Success comes in either of the above dimensions when the work is constructive
B2.    Many of us agreed that success — and constructiveness — must be measured in context. That is, what counts as an “advance” will be determined from within a given philosophical tradition, rather than from a neutral standpoint above or between traditions.
B3.    Some of us believed that it was possible to judge which idea or tradition was better overall, at least in some circumstances. None of us believed that one could readily judge which tradition was the absolute best.

We identified a series of challenges to comparative philosophy:

C1.    Incommensurability. If it is impossible to compare or translate, then comparative philosophy cannot succeed. However, most of us believed that differences between concepts or languages or traditions did not make comparison impossible. Both theoretical reasons (e.g., Donald Davidson’s argument) and practical examples (of seemingly successful comparative philosophy) were offered as evidence that this challenge could be overcome.
C2.    Some said that philosophy is simply one thing; there is no room for “comparison.” When philosophy is defined very narrowly, it may be that there is not enough room for the level of different development on which the possibility of comparative philosophy depends. Few of us were convinced that philosophy is such a narrow enterprise, however.
C3.    A complementary worry is that different philosophical traditions lack adequate common concerns. Many of us argued in response that we (and others not present at the conference) have in fact found areas of common concern in our work across traditions, and were skeptical of any a priori argument that denied we could have done this. It was pointed out that “common concern” does not necessitate finding identical formulations of concepts or problems. Various specific examples were proposed to reinforce this idea.
C4.    Research and teaching of comparative philosophy lacks adequate institutional support and potential students find it difficult to acquire the needed training. On this we were all in agreement.

Finally, on the basis of this understanding of comparative philosophy, what could we say about its methodology? There was quite general agreement on the following characteristics of a minimal methodology:

D1.    Openness is fundamental, though so is the exercise of critical philosophical judgment.
D2.    Traditions are not monolithic, but internally diverse; our specific methods should take advantage of this.
D3.    The idea of family resemblance is very helpful.
D4.    A focus on concepts or problems is often more constructive than the comparison of individual thinkers, though there are many exceptions — particularly if the figure studied was him or herself engaged in comparative work.
D5.    Careful attention to issues of language and grammar is important.
D6.    Adequate training and adequate institutional support is critical.

There is of course a great deal that could be said about many of these characteristics, but for now, this outline will have to suffice. Some suggested that there was no real difference between doing what is here characterized as “comparative philosophy” and simply doing philosophy well. This may be true: perhaps all philosophy is comparative philosophy.

Some argued for a more demanding method, which entailed constructing a kind of neutrality among traditions or a perspectiveless perspective. In general the conference participants were not sympathetic to such an approach, and noted that some of those who advocated such an understanding of comparative philosophy did so in order to argue that the enterprise was impossible. Most of us felt this was attacking a straw man.

Prescriptivity, Normativity, "Oughtiness," etc. in Classical Chinese

I can’t tell whether this is an easy question to answer or a hard one. How is normativity expressed in Classical Chinese, if it is clearly distinguishable at all from “descriptivity,” for lack of better term (in my mind right now at any rate)?

(I don’t intend to engage in any future “lexical fallacy” arguments, here. I’m not sure yet where this line of questioning is heading in general. It just occurred to me…)

Guidance through Principles vs. Concepts/Terms–What's the Difference?

So, continuing some thoughts about language and theory in ethical thought, I’ve been thinking about what significant difference there is supposed to be between ethical guidance through principles as opposed to guidance through some form of “conceptual mastery” or even “skill mastery.”

One way to think of the difference, roughly, between Western and early Chinese ethical thought is to think of the former as emphasizing formulation of principles and guidance through them and the latter as emphasizing either mastery of some sort of “thick” ethical concepts or some set of “ethical skills.” Hence, dominant forms of ethical theorizing in the modern West seem concerned to formulate correct principles of right action so that people can adopt them for deciding how to act, in morally relevant contexts of choice. On the other hand, what seems of concern to early Confucianism seems to be to grasp the meaning and import of certain important terms such as ren 仁 (“humaneness”), li 禮 (“ritual piety”), and so forth; and/or to master certain sorts of “moral perception” skills that involve some kind of correct “connoisseur” responses and judgments–e.g. seeing something as ren or as failing to be li.

There are a few questions about the accuracy of these generalizations that call for some narrowing. Isn’t “Western” really just a gloss for a particular style of theoretical inquiry, largely in the modern era, that models itself on scientific inquiry or on legal reasoning? Shouldn’t something be said about the role of “manuals” of ritual and ceremony, e.g. the Zhouli (The Rituals of the Zhou) and the Liji (The Record of Ritual) for Confucian thinking about ritual piety? They seem to provide discursive action-guidance, and maybe even justification (as a set of rules) for particular ritual actions and attitudes, if not for the institution as a whole (which is something I take Xunzi to have been trying give). Also, the Mohists seem pretty clearly to be formulating an action-guiding principle–viz. to promote benefit.

But those sorts of questions aside, I wonder how different in practice competent application of principles could be from expressions of competence with respect to concept application or skill implementation. What I have in mind is that application of a principle, like application of a concept, actually requires a skill–call it a “connoisseurship of principle application”–that then subsumes the process under similar sorts of success-conditions as any other skill: there has to be something like a “correct perception” of when a principle applies to a situation, just as in the situation where one sees that a concept applies.

Those who know the later Wittgenstein views could maybe see a connection here–I’m not at all an expert on Wittgenstein and it’s been years and years since I read anything on his views, so that would be helpful if someone could speak to the connection or its lack. Those familiar with W.D. Ross should see some connection here, I think, because Ross’s intuitionism requires some kind of noetic perception of one’s true duty from the interactions among considerations of prima facie duties that apply to a situation. That sounds like a skill to me, not unlike skill in legal reasoning (?)–someone who knows about this could also speak to it better than I.

This is all to suggest, tentatively, that there really isn’t much difference when we get down to the business of ethical living between having a “principle-based” view and some more “skill-based” view. Or is there? I’m inclined to reduce principle-application and concept-application to considerations of skill, albeit some kind of mental or “perceptual” skill, but maybe there are problems with that…

Abstract Theorizing and Language – Hall and Ames (and a bit of Hansen)

I’m working on a couple of papers related to language and ethics in early China. One of the issues that keeps coming up are the arguments, from two distinct directions, that the language of early China points to a tendency to avoid abstract thought, including abstract ethical thought. One argument comes from Chad Hansen’s lengthy mass-noun, stuff-ontology, mereology thesis. The other comes from Roger Ames and David Hall’s somewhat quick argument about the relatively “infrequent resort” to counterfactual conditionals in Chinese philosophy.

In this post, I’ll just say a quick thing about Hansen. In terms of “abstract” theorizing, Hansen’s view seems to have two (related) conclusions based on his argument that early Chinese think of the world in terms of intermixed “stuff” rather than individuals and their properties:

  • (H1) universals, or properties, and things are not components of early Chinese thinking; and
  • (H2) the mind (or in this case, the xin 心, “heart-mind”) is not conceived of as engaged in representations of the world (in a “mentalese language of thought”), but rather in acts of discrimination regarding the parts and (mass) wholes among which humans navigate.

In those pretty specific senses, Hansen thinks there is no abstract theorizing in early China. At least that’s my quick summary (read both of Hansen’s books,  Language and Logic in Ancient China and A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, to check).

Ames and Hall’s view is less systematic and perhaps based on (someone else’s) bad linguistic research, but there may be arguments for their view that transcend that research. I’ll try to summarize their position, from Thinking Through Confucius, and make a call for some examples that might be interesting to discuss as prima facie counterexamples.

Ames and Hall argue that the Confucian sensibility–and more broadly, all of Classical Chinese thought–is shaped by a lack of “consideration of the differential consequences of alternative possibilities” which “underlies the dominant modes of ethical and scientific thinking” (265). The argument is based in part on Alfred Bloom’s 1981 study, The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language and Thinking in China and the West. By way of “cheating,” I’ll paste the opening page of Wu Kuang-ming’s Philosophy East and West (37:1) book review as summary of Bloom’s research and to indicate the direction of argument that Wu takes against Bloom’s thesis:

“In this provocative book, Alfred Bloom claims that the Chinese language does
not have a counterfactual formulation, and therefore Chinese people have
difficulty understanding counterfactual expressions. He said this is because
counterfactuals depend on the ability to turn properties and actions into nouns,
lift them up (abstract them) from actuality, and fit them into a new theoretical
framework of universals. Thus in denying counterfactuals in Chinese language,
Bloom also denies universals in Chinese language. Since language allegedly
shapes thinking, the double denial of counterfactuality and universals amounts
to denying both in Chinese thinking. Since argumentation needs both counter-
factuals and universals, Chinese people are either poor arguers or incapable of
argumentation. This is a serious thesis indeed.

To prove the Chinese lack of counterfactuals, Bloom produced (1) a lack of
counterfactuals in contemporary Chinese writings and conversation, and (2)
poor scores on the tests on counterfactuals taken by Chinese people. To prove
the Chinese lack of theoretical abstraction and “entification,” Bloom produced
(3) poor scores on the tests on abstract thinking taken by Chinese people, and
(4) evidence of the difficulty of translating a single complex English sentence
into a single Chinese sentence. And to clinch the whole matter, Bloom reported
that (5) Chinese people themselves confessed to him that they have difficulty
grasping counterfactuals and universals, saying in effect that Chinese language
has neither.

This review claims that perhaps the situation is more complex than Bloom
would have us believe. Both counterfactuals and universals are needed in think-
ing. What is peculiar about both English and Chinese languages is that they have
their own peculiar ways of expressing these concepts. In other words, counter-
factual thinking must be distinguished from counterfactual formulations in a
specific language; similarly, universals must be distinguished from theoretical
abstract terms, which are a peculiar linguistic form. A lack in the linguistic
formulations of counterfactuals and theoreticals does not necessarily show the
lack of counterfactual thinking and thinking on universals.

The Chinese language has no tense forms, but the Chinese people are one of
the most history-conscious races in the world. The Chinese language has no
gender forms, yet some gender distinction is clearly embedded throughout in
names, adjectives, expressions, and so on, as in English. The fact that Chinese
language lacks linguistic devices for plurality did not prevent the Chinese people
from being good businessmen or engineers….”

In addition to Wu, there have been others critical of Bloom’s thesis (for example, Christoph Harbsmeier in Language and Logic, no. VII:1 in Science and Civilization in China, 116-18).

Ames and Hall admit that though Bloom’s thesis that there is no counterfactual locution in the Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, might be overstated, the “infrequent resort to such locutions in Chinese philosophic argument” (364, note 29) is what matters to their conclusions. So what are the relevant conclusions here? A good and fair summary, I think, lies in this quote:

“If ethics is to be considered always in the light of reflection, deliberation, and conscious judgment among alternatives, then one may certainly assent to the view that such ethical interests are not in any important way represented in classical Chinese philosophy.” (266)

So, two issues:

  • How valid is the reasoning from the relative lack of counterfactual locutions to this conclusion?
  • Regardless of counterfactuals, does the conclusion ring true? Why or why not?

We could start, I suppose, by discussing the nature and role of an apparent counterexemple: Mencius’s use of the “child in the well” example (from 2A:6, text and Legge’s translation–from Donald Sturgeon’s site):

所以謂人皆有不忍人之心者，今人乍見孺子將入於井，皆有怵惕惻隱之心。非所以內交於孺子之父母也，非所以要譽於鄉黨朋友也，非惡其聲而然也。由是觀之，無惻隱之心，非人也；無羞惡之心，非人也；無辭讓之心，非人也；無是非之心，非人也。

“When I say that all men have a mind which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others, my meaning may be illustrated thus: even now-a-days, if men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress. They will feel so, not as a ground on which they may gain the favour of the child’s parents, nor as a ground on which they may seek the praise of their neighbours and friends, nor from a dislike to the reputation of having been unmoved by such a thing. From this case we may perceive that the feeling of commiseration is essential to man, that the feeling of shame and dislike is essential to man, that the feeling of modesty and complaisance is essential to man, and that the feeling of approving and disapproving is essential to man.”

Does this really count as a counterexample–is it really counterfactual thinking and/or does it engage “reflection, deliberation, and conscious judgment among alternatives”? Are there other, better textual examples to discuss here?

Open Access to Dissertation on Guodian Texts

…by Dirk Meyer, University of Leiden. (I’m passing this information on from Rodo Pfister, who posted it on the Warring States Project message board.)

For those who are interested, here is the link to the whole dissertation in separate pdf downloadable files.

Here are the particulars, including abstract:

Meyer, Dirk , 2008, Meaning-Construction in Warring States Philosophical Discourse: A Discussion of the Palaeographic Materials from Tomb Guōdiàn One.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Research School CNWS, Faculty of Arts, Leiden University. 504p.

Keywords: Archaeology, Early China, Early writing and reading, Excavated manuscripts, Guodian One, Manuscript culture, Manuscript production, Philology, Philosophy, Text and tomb, Textual communities, Warring States Period.

Abstract: This book analyzes a defined corpus of philosophic texts from the Warring States period. It treats texts as objects in their own right and, in a broad sense, discusses the relationship between material conditions of text and manuscript culture, writing, techniques of meaning-construction, and philosophy in Warring States period (ca. 481-222). By analyzing the formal structure of the philosophic texts from the Warring States, the present study distinguishes between two ideal types of texts, which I call “argument-based texts” and “authority-based texts”. Meaning-construction in the former type of texts is based in writing; in the latter ideal type of texts, meaning-construction requires reference to (oral) commentators. Hence, whereas argument-based texts facilitate philosophy that is exempt from needs of contextualization, authority-based texts, for their part, are mere modules of larger philosophic processes that remain outside the texts themselves.

Flourishing, the Non-moral Good, & Virtue Ethics

Here’s an issue that I think is relevant to any view about “flourishing” attributed to early Chinese philosophy. If the basic idea of flourishing is some idea about faring well, or “welfare,” we can ask what it takes conceptually to have such an idea. What comes to mind for me is that there has to be some notion of a person’s good, where that good is construed in some way independent of acting correctly–i.e. it has to be a notion of a person’s “non-moral” good. Even as I write that, I’m not quite sure what the reason for that is, but it seems important to me to keep welfare distinct from rightness. I might be totally wrong, but my philosophical instincts whisper otherwise.

The reason this seems important to me vis-a-vis early Chinese philosophy is that it seems like the non-moral good is featured in the Mohist idea of benefit, li 利. But li is not taken as theoretically central or even relevant in the Analects and the Mencius. Maybe it is important in the Xunzi, but I think that is because the Xunzi has a consequentialist view like the Mozi. If any of this is on the right track, then there is not in fact any virtue ethics in early China, in the sense that Van Norden and others think there to be. A lot rides on the idea of flourishing as relying on that of the non-moral good, and hence as being construed independently of rightness, so I wonder what can be said in favor of or against that…

For New England Area Types

Steve Angle has organized, with Michael Slote, an NEH seminar at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut on “Confucianism and Virtue Ethics.” It is to run from July 7 to August 15. Steve opens the lecture sessions to anyone who is interested and willing. Here (pasted from email) is the schedule for the lecture sessions, along with what Steve has to say by way of invitation:

“It occurred to me that maybe you could post something on the blog about the speakers who will be coming to Middletown for the summer seminar. It would be neat to have a mini-get-together or two. The details I have now are:

May Sim, Holy Cross — July 10
Bryan Van Norden, Vassar — July 15
Shirong Luo, Simmons — July 17
Eric Hutton, Utah — July 24

All lectures held at the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, beginning at 3:30. I encourage anyone planning on coming from out of town to let me know.

Thanks!

Steve”

(I know I will be at some of these, since I am relatively close by; it would be nice to meet some of you out there if you are also able to make it! Also, Chris Panza, who writes the blog “A Ku Indeed!” will be a seminar attendee. -Manyul)

Book Review – brief but not shamelessly so

Here is some of the draft of my review of Van Norden’s Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy for Journal of Asian Studies. The word-limit for the review was very low (800 words!); I didn’t really meet it, but it did make me focus, largely on methodology. Keep in mind that this wasn’t so much written for philosophers but for the broader JAS readership. Other reviews, longer and written for philosophers, are sure to give better due to details of Van Norden’s book. Nonetheless, I welcome any comments and edifying criticism.

************************************

Two aspects of Van Norden’s interpretation that mark it as distinctively philosophical are (a) the presentation of early Chinese texts as sets of philosophically systematic “views,” and (b) the presentation of such views as in some sense “defensible,” though not perfectly so. The stated underpinning for both is Van Norden’s rendering of Paul Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of restoration”—as opposed to the “hermeneutics of suspicion”—using principles of interpretation derived from the “meaning holism” views of 20th century American philosophers W.V.O. Quine and Donald Davidson. There are two: the principle of charity and that of humanity. By the principle of charity, one interprets the utterances of others in such a way that they are not attributed beliefs “we regard as not just false, but absurdly so” (6) on a systematic scale. On the other hand, by the principle of humanity, one attributes false beliefs to others “if an understanding of their larger linguistic and social context explains how humans who are substantially like us could have held those beliefs in that context” (7-8). However, these are minimally constrictive principles at best and they cannot really distinguish the hermeneutics of restoration from that of suspicion for Van Norden. As he should be aware, the principles of charity and humanity are meant primarily to provide theoretical explanation for how linguistic interpretation is possible at all, either interpersonal or intercultural, given the apparently vicious circle of meaning holism: “words have meaning because of the roles they play in sentences, and sentences have meaning because of the words that make them up” (7). More strongly, they seem to be “transcendental” principles in an important sense: they do much more to explain how linguistic communication is possible than to provide useful tools of actual translation and interpretation in the usual case. If meaning holism a la Quine and Davidson is right then we must be governed by interpretive charity and humanity—they are not optional virtues of interpretation. So, even the hermeneutics of suspicion must rely on these principles to make bare sense of the meanings of texts. More important to “suspicion” is maintaining critical distance from such first-order meanings in order to gain traction on the meanings of those meanings, according to some theory of their political, social, or psychological genealogy. Van Norden cites Ricoeur’s labeling of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as “masters of suspicion,” also adding Foucault to the list (4); consideration of these figures should make the point about critical distance and second-order meaning obvious. There is, therefore, a false dichotomy under which Van Norden is working. One need not approach the text either from an angle of critical suspicion or from that of interested engagement. There is at least a third option: one might approach, as many Sinologists are wont to do, from the point of view of historical restoration without interested concern for philosophical engagement with the resulting, interpreted set of views.

Hermeneutic principles aside, what justifies a reading of early Chinese texts that engages their meanings on the first-order level and regards them seriously as being engaged in something that is relevant to contemporary discourse on ethics? Why not regard them as texts that reflect concerns, motives, and worldviews bound—and limited—by cogency to a specific time and place, and that address others who are so situated? I think there are two answers, expressed somewhat more persuasively in Van Norden’s actual interpretations than in his ardent apologia for them.

First, there seem in fact to be undeniable aspects of “virtue ethics” in the views of Kongzi and Mengzi. (Van Norden provides a lengthy argument for attributing sayings in portions of the Lunyu 論語 to Kongzi (65-96); a much briefer one, following consensus, for Mengzi and the Mengzi 孟子 (211-13).) This is partly due to the origin of contemporary interest in virtue ethics—and coining of that term—in disenchantment among some prominent philosophers in the past thirty years with the impersonal, principle-based core of modern ethical theory. Many adherents of this backlash movement have looked to pre-modern ethical views, particularly those of Aristotle, for a model of ethical reflection more harmonious with human beings as concerned with situated personal goals and aspirations rather than as locations of rational-choice in an abstract moral universe. Though one may argue with details, Van Norden makes a compelling case for reformulating the pre-modern concerns expressed in the Lunyu and Mengzi through the constellation of concerns he identifies as “components of a virtue ethics” (37-59): flourishing, virtues, ethical cultivation, and a philosophical anthropology. Likewise, Van Norden’s portrayal of the Mozi and his followers as consequentialists engaged in a dialectic against the Ruist followers of Kongzi is nuanced and complex, read as it is through a similar dialectic found between contemporary consequentialists and proponents of virtue ethics.

Second, the ultimate justification for Van Norden’s hermeneutic of engagement must be found, I think, in disciplinary direction and temperament. He is, by profession, a philosopher. Philosophers are interested in the relationship between ethics and truth—and sometimes also in discovering ethical truths. It is the latter that motivates Van Norden’s interest in the historical material in the first place; so engagement with the first-order meanings found in the text is, in his eyes, important to that task. As he puts it, citing one of his mentors,

…it would be nothing more than necrophilia to reproduce without alteration some historical position. …Generally speaking, if we wish to engage in the “historical retrieval” of earlier philosophical views, our goals should be to produce a position that is, in Lee Yearley’s formulation, “credible” and “appropriate.” Our interpretation should be “credible” in the sense that it is plausible for us today. …But at the same time historical retrieval should result in a position that is “appropriate” in the sense that it is faithful to the philosophy that inspires it. (323)

This attitude also underlies perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book, a chapter on “Pluralistic Ruism” in which Van Norden lays the groundwork for a continuation of the Ruist ethical tradition, modified in important ways to accommodate aspects of the modern condition, especially a commitment to pluralism of values and the corresponding visions of flourishing that can justify those values within a virtue ethics approach.

Hall and Ames–"Postmodern"?

A comment on Van Norden’s uses of the term postmodern in Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy:

Van Norden often refers to the approach that Roger Ames and David Hall take toward Chinese texts as “postmodern.” Based on Van Norden’s own depiction of postmodernism, there’s something puzzling in this tendency. Here is Van Norden on postmodernism:

“The term has been in use since the early twentieth century and is used by different thinkers in different ways in different intellectual disciplines. However, one of the most influential characterizations was given by Jean-Francois Lyotard, who described it as ‘incredulity toward metanarratives.’ I take him to mean the following. A narrative is any account or story, such as evolutionary theory. A metanarrative is a story about why a particular narrative is justified, or why we ought to believe it. …However, postmodernism’s ‘incredulity toward metanarratives’ means not believing that any metanarrative is justified. In other words, one does not regard as objectively warranted any claims to truth.” (VECECP, 3)

Here are a couple of central snippets (can snippets be central?) from Ames’ and Hall’s “Apologia” for their approach in Thinking Through Confucius:

“We have openly resorted to a method which we shall term (before our critics, with less constructive intent, have a chance to do so) ‘cross-cultural anachronism.’ That is to say, we have sought to understand the thinking of Confucius by recourse to issues originating within contemporary Western philosophic culture, issues which Confucius may well have not explicitly entertained. Although this method has required frequent resort to anachronistic references, our ultimate aim has been to provide the grounds for arriving at a more accurate picture of Confucius’ thinking independent of such reference.” (TTC, 7; emphasis added)

“We wish to challenge the understanding of Confucius’ Analects as a mere repository of culture-bound ethical norms relevant to the origin and development of classical Chinese culture, and to promote the relevance of his vision as a potential participant in present philosophic conversations.” (TTC, 6; emphasis added)

It doesn’t seem very clear that Ames and Hall are postmodern in the sense Van Norden identifies as influential. If anything, the two desiderata of historical accuracy and relevance expressed by them seem to make their project very much like Van Norden’s, at least in aim. But maybe there are aspects of Ames and Hall that are postmodern in some other sense than Lyotard’s. Van Norden hints at another sense in this comment:

“…the post modernists [such as Ames and Hall] are right that any faithful interpretation of Ruism will not attribute to it any sort of Cartesianism. Ruists are not metaphysical dualists, nor are they epistemological foundationalists. …It is certainly true that Ruism is not ‘modernist,’ but this does not entail that it is ‘postmodernist.’ Readings of the original texts that make it seem that Ruists advocate creativity unconstrained by human nature, Heaven, and tradition seem very forced to me. Furthermore, precisely because the postmodern interpretation of Ruism renders it so similar to Rortian pragmatism, it offers nothing inspiringly new to contemporary debates. Finally, if our choices are between modernism, postmodernism, and a hermeneutic approach, I find the third the most promising.” (VECECP, 324-5)

I have two thoughts here. First, it seems like Van Norden is being unhelpfully loose, terminologically. He doesn’t mean that Ames and Hall are themselves postmodern in their approach (maybe he thinks this, but that doesn’t seem to be his point here). He means that they attribute to the early Chinese views that are characterizable as postmodernist–Ames and Hall’s interpretation “renders” Ruism “so similar to Rortian pragmatism.” But then, second, it seems like Van Norden should distinguish Rortian pragmatism from Lyotard’s postmodernism. Unless I’m mistaken, Rorty’s view is not that we should be incredulous toward any metanarrative, but that we should be incredulous toward thinking of the metanarrative as somehow providing non-contingent, “externally objective” grounding, grounding that could serve us in some (modernist) foundationalist sense. Nonetheless, a metanarrative can serve us with the right sense of our own historical contingency and its relationship to the metanarrative. In that sense, Rorty’s view is postmodern–in rejecting foundationalism; but I don’t think in that sense Rorty’s view is any different from what Van Norden glosses in the following footnote as the “hermeneutic” approach to philosophy that he favors:

“By ‘hermeneutics’ here I mean not just the position of H-G. Gadamer…but rather the broad range of positions that agree with postmodernism in rejecting Cartesian foundationalism but seek to retain the ideal of philosophical progress through dialogue and constructive argumentation.” (VECECP, 325 fn.4)

That doesn’t seem very different from Rortian pragmatism but maybe someone who knows Rorty’s views better can correct me.

In any case, on the Ames and Hall approach, the pragmatism template is self-consciously applied to early Chinese texts because they think it helps to make the text, particularly certain terms, more coherent in an overall reading of the text. I’m not sure why it is cogent criticism of the approach that it doesn’t provide anything “inspiringly new to contemporary debates.” That makes it seem like if you can’t make an ancient text seem inspiringly interesting to contemporary debates, then your interpretation is no good.

Comments welcome!